Sister vs. Sister

Apocryphal and Abstractions 2014

Elaine and I were taking our early evening walk when we heard the yelling. We turned left on Baybrook to see what was going on.

We saw the school before we saw the yellers. It was the rear of Our Lady of Blood Parochial school—the paved playground surrounded by a chain link fence with vertical privacy boards that were spaced far enough apart for us to peek through. The was a cluster (gaggle?) of nuns spread in a wide circle while two of them were duking it out in the center. There was one elderly nun sitting who may have been the referee or just tired..

We broke our “no stopping” rule and watched.

“Do you think they make a habit of this?” Elaine asked.

“Check out thesuperior look on the one sitting,” I said.

They wore boxing gloves and their nun’s habit; the headpiece of one tilted—about ready to topple. The gloves were comically large, much larger with padding than the standard boxing gloves. These two were not in the same weight class. One was short and squat and the other, the one with the tilted headpiece, was string bean tall.

Also, they weren’t the ones yelling; it was their audience, their Sisters as it were. Sister Beanpole pounded down with a right atop Sister Squat’s head as if she was wielding a sledgehammer and knocked her headpiece off. She then hit her again on top of the head—nothing boxing-like in this maneuver.

“Do you think they do this religiously?” I asked Elaine, beating her to the punch line.

Sister Squat turned her back and then spun around and hit Sister Beanpole with a roundhouse right to the body that knocked her into a trio of Sisters off to one side.

Sr. Squat then raised both her stubby arms over her head in victory and Sr. Beanpole walked slowly over and gave her opponent a congratulatory hug as some of the others took money from their pockets and paid the others who were waiting, palms open.

Then arm in arm the fighters stood as their Sisters lined up two abreast behind them and when the fidgeting and talking stopped, the older nun, who had been seated, nodded and the Sister fighters led the group back into the school